This is a retro post from June 18, 2006

I initially made this post on another blog. Posting it here now because someone asked me too.

RSS Filtering

I love RSS Ã¢â‚¬â€œ itÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s one of the best ideas of the last decade, I think. But I am suffering RSS overload, as I know many others are. I think RSS should be extended to support filtering, like you can do on a Google or MSN search. Example: I like reading Dave WinerÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s blog, but not when he talks about politics. I like Engadgets feeds, but I donÃ¢â‚¬â„¢t care about reviews on Digital Cameras (got a great one, not in the market) or Video Games (got an Xbox, Xbox360, and PS2 Ã¢â‚¬â€œ donÃ¢â‚¬â„¢t need another one).

I think you should be able to subscribe to an RSS feed with negatives, like Ã¢â‚¬Å“Scobleizer Ã¢â‚¬â€œHDTV Ã¢â‚¬â€œ AdobeÃ¢â‚¬Â Ã¢â‚¬â€œ this would give me all of Scoble’s blog entries, EXCEPT those that match Ã¢â‚¬Å“HDTVÃ¢â‚¬Â or Ã¢â‚¬Å“AdobeÃ¢â‚¬Â. Feeds containing those terms just wouldnÃ¢â‚¬â„¢t hit my radar. RSS Readers should be written to allow me to place Ã¢â‚¬Å“Global NegativesÃ¢â‚¬Â – where regardless of the feed I can exclude something like Ã¢â‚¬Å“politicsÃ¢â‚¬Â or Ã¢â‚¬Å“DRMÃ¢â‚¬Â Ã¢â‚¬â€œ whatever I want. I should also be able to set Ã¢â‚¬Å“per-feedÃ¢â‚¬Â negatives.

Actually, I just had another thought related to this Ã¢â‚¬â€œ there should be two levels of filtering allowed Ã¢â‚¬â€œ one based only on Ã¢â‚¬Å“TagsÃ¢â‚¬Â, or Ã¢â‚¬Å“categoriesÃ¢â‚¬Â that would exclude, say HDTV tagged articles, but not articles that contain Ã¢â‚¬Å“HDTVÃ¢â‚¬Â but arenÃ¢â‚¬â„¢t actually flagged as an Ã¢â‚¬Å“HDTV articleÃ¢â‚¬Â. The second level of filtering would be global, and would prohibit ANY post that simply contains the Ã¢â‚¬Å“negativeÃ¢â‚¬Â keywords. ItÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s all about getting the user the content they want, and giving them the tools to filter out stuff they know they are not interested in!

Paul, I use an IE plug-in called OnFolio – it’s now a Microsoft property, so it definitely isn’t open source! I can point you to RSS Bandit (http://www.rssbandit.org/) is probably the best RSS reader offered Open-Source. I would switch to it if it did what I mention above!

I use OnFolio mostly because it just sits in my browser AND it has single button “next message” navigation. I can’t believe how many readers leave this critical little feature out!

Rob, which rss reader are you using? If you can point me to an open source one, I could have a look. In essence what you want is extremely simple to do. For me the hardest part would probably the GUI part where you let people specifiy the keywords (not much of a gui person, but I DO know my regex’s).